Customer Reviews

Report from Engine Co. 82

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I was in seventh grade in 1978 when I first read Report From Engine Co. 82, and no book I've read since has ever had as profound an effect on me. Dennis Smith and his brother firefighters on Intervale Ave. inspired me and, I'm sure, many others to become firefighters. The book is gripping and "in-your-face", taking you into some of the most dangerous and frustrating working conditions imaginable.

I just re-read the book, and doing so rekindled the respect and admiration for the heroes of the FDNY that it originally instilled in me 22 years ago. Recently a friend and I visited "The Big House" in the South Bronx, talked with the firemen, took pictures of the neighborhood, and brought Smith's book to life. The pull box at Charlotte St. & East 170th St. made infamous by Smith's book has been replaced by an ERS box; the crumbling, burning tenaments replaced by suburban looking homes. All that remains of the horrors that took place there in the seventies is the memories of daily heroism performed by the men of Engines 82, 85, Ladder 31 and 712 perpetuated by Smith's book.

Now a teacher, I'll be sharing Report From Engine Co. 82 with my class this year. I hope that with the use of this book, I can inspire the same respect, compassion, and concern for human life in my students that Smith inspired in me so long ago.

You don't have to be a firefighter or a "wanna-be" to love Report From Engine Co. 82. Treat yourself to it as soon as you can.

Dennis Smith's Report From Engine Company 82 was a huge best seller when it first appeared in 1972 and it immediately put its author into the rarified air of commercially successful authors. No small feat considering that 1 of every 3 books published fails to make any money at all and fewer than 1% sell more than a million copies, the way this book did.

Smith captured forever the day to day grind of inner city firefighters, before air masks were used regularly. He brings the reader into the last days of pre-modern, urban firefighting, the suffocating heat, the blinding smoke, the gut wrenching fear and most of all the camaraderie that comes along with a job that requires disciplined teamwork and exacting attention to detail.

Report opens up with a fire, of course, where Engine 82 and Ladder 31 are forced to breach or break through a wall to get a teenager out of a rear bedroom of a burning apartment. The first two firefighters from Engine 82 enter without air masks and take a terrible beating before they're relieved on the line by two members who are "tanked up." Smith takes the reader through the entire event, step by agonizing step.

Smith lets us see the teeming ghetto that existed around his Intervale Avenue firehouse at the time - today, that same area is covered with single family Nehemia Homes. He takes the reader through the emergencies (gas and water leaks), car accidents, false alarms and spectacular fires, from a firefighter's perspective. In it, he chronicles the death of a fireman, from Engine 82, who fell off the back of the rig, or backstep, while responding to a false alarm. In those days, firefighters still "rode outside" the rig, hanging off the back of the Engine or Pumper by holding onto straps that hung off a rear metal bar across the "backstep" or rear of the rig.

Dennis Smith worked in the early part of a quarter century period (from the late sixties to the late eighties) that saw 30% of all the buildings in NYC burned. Entire tracts of the South Bronx and huge swaths of Brooklyn were reduced to prairie like fields. Thousands of other buildings were made vacant.

I work in the same area today...about a mile and a half west of Engine 82 & Ladder 31. When I first arrived there in 1986 there were tons of vacant buildings, left over remnants from the firestorm of the previous decade. I've known lots of firefighters who went through that period. Most of them have been put out of the job with various forms of cancer, emphysema, throat disorders etc. The effects of swallowing all that smoke are well documented thanks to their sacrifices. Most of NYC's inner city firefighters from that period are dead now.

Of course, air masks are mandatory now (thank God!) and bunker gear has been mandated as of 1994. Despite all that, New York has lost over twenty firefighters in the line of duty over the past five years alone, 764 in its history - pre-9/11.

The book is divided into numerous vignettes which cover the range of incidents Engine 82 responded to, the squalor of the South Bronx, the good natured ribbing of firehouse life, while contrasting the job and that area, to his home and family life in Westchester County, about 30 miles north of New York City.

If there is any nit to be picked with this book, it's that the other firefighters are not very well developed characters. This may have been due to Smith's reluctance to expose the real people he'd worked with. Still, it's a quick and compelling read. Smith has an engaging story telling style and a good-hearted humility and strong sense of humanity that shines through the book. A must for fire buffs everywhere and an interesting behind-the-scenes story about our very recent history for others.

This book, when I first read it in the 70's as a kid, cemented my desire to be a firefighter. It went past the gleaming paint and chrome and really showed me the grit of the job; that it wasn't always the glorious one I had envisioned but more of a thankless one. Dennis Smith's vivid imagery makes you feel like you're in the battle right there with his company. It also shows the toll that firefighting takes on it's participants, the physical as well as the emotional scars the job leaves. Smith takes you through his personal life, discussing his humble childhood and the effect his career has on his adult life.

All in all, a wonderful story that grabs you at the beginning and doesn't let go until the last page.

I first read this book 20+ years ago, when I was under 20 years of age myself but streetwise from being the "wheels" (with a driver's license and a car) for various escapades all over Chicago in my raucous, hard-partying and utterly politically incorrect youth. Many aspects of "Report From Engine Co. 82" stuck with me through the years, and I've re-read it several times. Now I'm 40 and an ER RN in a Chicago hospital where we see more than our share of the extraordinarily dysfunctional lives of the people who live in poverty in the neighborhoods that surround our hospital -- the type of job and environment Smith portrays so well in "Report From Engine Co. 82."

"Report From Engine Co. 82." tells truths about the nearly inescapable poverty and illiteracy of people scraping by in lives that are marginalized in every possible way because they don't -- can't -- really care for themselves appropriately because they don't even know how. Poverty isn't what it used to be -- but it's still as screwed up as it was in Smith's first book. Most of our ER visits aren't really emergencies, just as most of the calls Company 82 responded to weren't emergencies, either. Nowadays, people call 911; when "Report" was written, that 911 system didn't exist yet. But not much has changed since then, in terms of what the firefighters/paramedics respond to and bring to the ER.

Most of the "emergencies" he sees are not emergencies. The non-emergencies, combined with the real emergencies, portray the dangerous and unthinking way poor people live through a combination of lack of resources, lack of experience with the "straight" world, lack of common sense, and minute-by-minute survival thinking. Most of these emergencies and non-emergencies are easily prevented -- if people had common sense, proper parenting, and a normal instinct for self-preservation.

These qualities, however, are surprisingly hard to come by in poverty, and this is what Smith dramatizes. The heroin overdoses. The stupid kids doing stupid things because they are constantly left unattended and to their own devices. Kids who shoot themselves in the thigh or foot -- or worse -- "playing" with guns. Fires that kill children because space heaters provide the heat slumlords refuse to provide in their code-violating buildings. The incipient hatred and distrust poor minority neighborhoods have of the white emergency personnel and firefighters who respond to their calls. The huge cultural gaps that make true communication and understanding so difficult -- even when you're both the same race and both speaking English.

What Smith accurately portrays is the way poverty-stricken people "live in the now" -- people whose entire lives are spent with no real financial or material stability or security. These are people for whom the concept of saving money for the future is impossible, either as a concept or a reality. People for whom making an appointment days or weeks in the future, and actually remembering to get to the appointment, is nearly impossible. Their main mode of thought is: what do I need to do now, what do I want to do now, what do I need or want to do in the next five minutes. This inability to think about and plan for the future is endemic, as is the inability to prioritize that which really matters -- one suspects because most of these people realize on some level they have no future that truly matters to the rest of society, and they're incapable of living as the rest of the "straight" world lives because they never have, didn't grow up with it, and don't know the language of living that life, let alone the mindset.

These are the people and children who have no insurance, no health care, no glasses when their vision is bad, no braces or dental care when their teeth are bad; who never use birth control (to prevent pregnancy OR to prevent disease transmission). People who don't understand why it's inappropriate to come to the ER with an upper respiratory infection and get pissed off when they wait hours for care while higher priority, higher-acuity patients (in respiratory distress, cardiac arrest, heart attacks, asthma attacks, and overdose, etc.) are taken before they are.

Conversely, these are also the people who shun health care until they are so sick they can no longer avoid it, and discover they have cancer... Cancer that could have been prevented or at least treated, often saving their lives, had they ever had regular health care -- but who are now consigned to an inevitable death they will blame on the healthcare providers who couldn't save them because they were at a stage beyond saving or treating in any way other than palliative.

Smith's New York is NOT the New York of Sex And The City. This is the New York of the infants whose welfare mothers don't immunize them, but have the latest, most expensive coats and boots because conspicuous consumption is how they live: you show how much money you have by wearing all that your money has bought you (rather than doing the far less glamorous but sensible things more responsible people, whose children were WANTED rather than accidental, do). The New York of the kids having kids who have kids, all of whom have never known proper parenting, nutrition, or health care. The overdoses. The children who come in with accidental poisonings or burns from household chemicals because no one was watching them. The attempted suicides with anything and everything -- cold medicine, knives, guns, illegal drugs. The kids raised by siblings because the parent is completely incapable, if they're even around, with or without the additional problems of substance use/abuse, addiction, or domestic abuse. The families which are largely single-parent families -- and where the parental figure may be an elder sibling, aunt or cousin who cares more for the children than their biological parent(s) does or is capable of doing.

This is also the world of the terrified illegal immigrants who wait so long to call for help because they're afraid of INS (now ICE) and deportation; by the time they do, they're often too sick to save. The penniless old people whose pensions don't cover their living expenses and who don't call for help because they're terrified of being discharged from the hospital to a nursing home and losing what little autonomy and material security they have left. The fractured families (with utterly dysfunctional dynamics) who interfere with the paramedics' jobs -- as well as the tight-knit families who are rich only in love for one another. The people who refuse help they desperately need because they fear and distrust the paramedics and firemen trying to help them, and because their healthcare illiteracy is such that they have no idea what is necessary to save their lives, and so refuse or avoid medical treatment that could stop problems in stages when they're still treatable. The mothers who speak no English, who superstitiously fear that emergency treatment will kill their children, yet who are so desperate to save their babies, they don't know what else to do, because all home remedies have now failed. The endless numbers of people who let their prescriptions run out or try to save money by taking less than the prescribed doses and then have severe health problems that wouldn't happen if they bought and took their meds as prescribed -- but who, for multiple reasons, can't and/or don't. The people who beg not to be brought to the hospital because "people DIE in the hospital" -- people who don't understand that their neighbors and family members who died in the hospital, died because they waited far too long to call for help, and were therefore were beyond saving when they finally got to a hospital.

Anyone who works in public service as a fireman, cop, nurse, social worker, or psych intake worker in a big city -- and in poverty-stricken, crime- and drug-infested suburbs and rural communities -- can relate to Smith's book. For everyone who majored in something else, this book opens a door and exposes the lives of people you don't even know exist, people you don't acknowledge when you're forced to share a bus or train with them during rush hour (or who you intentionally avoid by driving in your own car, despite the expense of gas, insurance, and time spent on the commute): the people who don't work, or the people who work wage-slave jobs like janitor, maid, fast-food worker, security guard, who can barely pay their bills or care for their children with what little they make -- or who blow it all on liquor and/or drugs and/or gambling (or all three) to escape the miserable hopelessness of their lives. The kids who have the latest "stuff" -- whether it's the shiny ten speed bicycles Smith writes about, or today's video games and cell phone/mp3 player/cameras -- but whose parents can't or won't give them what they really need: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a stable environment from which to emerge every day to deal with the life-endangering risks of walking to and attending public schools that do little more than babysit and warehouse kids whose futures include teen pregnancy (and the late-term, life-threatening miscarriages that go with total lack of prenatal care, with or without drug use), repeated incarceration, and shorter-than-average lifespans due to the daily likelihood of violence in their communities and their lives.

Smith's portrayal of this kind of poverty is not pretty but it is not unsympathetic -- there are glimpses of beauty and hope, mostly in the young women and children who haven't yet been ruined by their surroundings. Smith tempers it all with a matter-of-fact acceptance that although it is his job to care for these people, he may never really understand them because he's now too removed from that life, and he takes on faith that they possess human qualities they often fail to demonstrate. But some do show their humanity, and those are the people he does it for.

Smith does an excellent job of portraying the paradox that the job of these firefighters and paramedics is to help and save these people, which by its nature includes finding them WORTH helping and saving, at the same time as they move and live as far away from these neighborhoods and the associated poverty, crime and drug problems as they possibly can. This is not merely a racial difference. There are plenty of black and Latino paramedics, cops, firefighters, nurses and doctors who straddle the gulf (some might say 'minefield') between their class and the class of the people they help, in circumstances that are at best trying and at worst nearly impossible to help them transcend for any sustained length of time.

Smith portrays the sympathetic detachment required to know that this is what you do, all day, every day you work, with only the hope that one or two out of ten people will actually genuinely and sincerely thank you for what you do or have done for them -- which is that elusive reward you get, one that can make it all seem worth it when it happens -- and to hope that when you show up and give this of yourself on every shift, there might be one kid or teen who sees what you're doing, who still has enough time ahead of them to see this glimpse into another world... A world it is just *barely* possible for them to enter given enough determination, education, mentoring and drive, and sadly also given enough instinct to discard much of what they learn in their families about how they THINK the world works, versus how the world REALLY works for the more educated and better-off people who run it.

The fact that Smith can show all this without denigrating an entire class of people -- does, in fact, portray them with humanity and the grace one occasionally sees in these circumstances -- is because he also recognizes that he is not that far removed from the kind of poverty he sees on the job (he grew up poor, too). He recognizes and accepts that he is that kid who admired firemen as a boy and saw a different world -- he is that kid who made the leap to the next class up, to the working class and blue collar as opposed to poverty-stricken. He understands the dysfunction -- the drinking, the drugs, the abuse -- that occurs in the neighborhoods Co. 82 responds to because it occurred in his neighborhood, his family, his poverty, while he was growing up.

This understanding that few "get out" -- and that he was one of the lucky few -- underscores with sympathy his otherwise stark portrayal of the job of a NYC fireman in the 70s when NYC was not a desirable place to live and people did their best to escape "the city" as soon as their financial circumstances permitted it.

The uncensored version of this book (which is the one I've read multiple times) also shows the bizarre split someone who works as a fireman/paramedic, nurse, or doctor must negotiate within themselves -- the intimate knowledge you have of the bodies of the people you must save, which is merely part of your job but which you can't really talk about to any family member or lover who isn't in one of these fields. I don't mean merely intimacy with people's genitals -- though there is that, such as the way the Smith describes heroin overdoses getting icebags put under their testicles (negative stimulus, designed to bring unresponsive, unconscious people back to responsiveness and consciousness). I mean the intimacy of seeing people stripped of their modesty and dignity, voluntarily (prostitutes) or involuntarily (the terribly sick), whose personal space and body integrity you must necessarily invade, often in less-than-respectful or diplomatic ways because there is no time for those niceties when someone is dying and you're trying to save them. People who don't work in these fields can never really understand how you can be unaffected by the nudity, exposure and/or intimate knowledge you have of these total strangers, and the disinterest or casual attitude with which you greet what would shock most everyone else.

And, of course, you're not unaffected by this knowledge. Sometimes you're disturbed, or someone or something sticks in your mind -- the things you've seen or had to do -- and is recalled in inappropriate moments with your loved ones. You're not unaffected, you're just emotionally calloused or you compartmentalize it, in order to repeatedly perpetrate and endure this violation of the boundaries between strangers and its inherent power imbalance: you, as the emergency personnel, never have to reveal any of these intimacies to your patients... but they must necessarily, willingly or not, reveal them to you. This includes the mentally ill and the hopelessly drug-addled or dopesick (or both, combined) -- sometimes the most disturbing intimacy of all: the insides of their heads and their distorted, sometimes frighteningly unhinged, perceptions of the world around them.

This book was an inspiration to me and portrayed the sometimes harsh realties of urban fire fighting in the 1970's. Almost 20 years after reading it, I had my wife read it and she too thought highly of the book. I still have the original copy with the firefighter sitting on top of an engine by a deluge gun.

Dennis Smith has given a vivid first person account of firefighting in a busy, urban setting. He does an excellent job of portraying the personalities and feelings of himself and his collegues. The author depicts the residents of that impoverished area with generosity. This book has given me new respect for firefighters. I only wish his other books on firefighting were in print.

By far the best book ever written about fire fighting. Dennis grabs you on the first page. He shows the real life on a big city busy department.

Dennis Smith takes us into a world seldom seen by the average person. His accounts are gripping and have you believe you're on the hoseline backing up the nozzleman. It is a truly captivating book that shows the reader what really is the root of urban decay. As a fellow firefighter, I couldn't put this book down and have re-read it several times. It is a timeless piece that shows what it's like to be a New York City firefighter. I recommend this to everybody.

This is an extremely well written and easy to read book. The narration draws you in and transports you to the streets to ride along with the author. You can almost smell the smoke...

While there are many aspect of this book that are seriously dated (such as the seventies-era street slang and some of the firefighting equipment and procedures), most of this story could still be written today. This is the gritty reality of firefighting in the toughest sections of an urban center. You can feel the exhaustion and exhileration mix together as we ride through the decaying ghetto from one fire alarm to the next. What really stands out in my mind, though, is that Smith never loses his empathy for the people of the South Bronx. Even with all the abuse he and his company endure, he still understands their plight and wishes he could make their world better.

Nothing in my experience can compare with the magnitude of serving an area like the South Bronx, but many aspects of this story still reflect my career. The commaraderie of the fire station is the same, as is the sense of duty and willingness to risk everything to save a life. This is a terrific book for anyone looking to understand what it takes to be a firefighter, especially on the busiest city streets in the country.

I read this book many years ago. Many years before I became a firefighter paramedic. I saw it advertised on the Firehouse.com webpage and had the urge to read it again from my new perspective. I wasn't disappointed. I don't read at all, and I couldn't put this book down (again).